Picks and Pans Review: No Nukes

More than a film compendium of last September's concerts at New York's Madison Square Garden and the following outdoor rally at Battery Park, this is a large-scale, mostly successful screen test for several rock performers. Oh, the message is there all right, laboriously laid out in song, story, speech and Three Mile Island film clips. But the audience got a bigger bang out of music from Crosby, Stills & Nash, the Doobie Brothers, John Hall, Bonnie Raitt, Jesse Colin Young and Gil Scott-Heron. Four additional rockers come off so strongly that their agents, even now, should be setting up movie deals. Jackson Browne offers a pounding, dramatically motivated Running on Empty. Dueting Mockingbird, James Taylor and Carly Simon exude the kind of erotic eye contact last seen with Bogie & Bacall. And Bruce Springsteen, in one riveting set, demonstrates how to fill a stage, not just occupy it. He is his own three-ring circus. For these musical highlights, try No Nukes; for unbiased illumination on the nuclear energy dilemma, turn elsewhere. (PG)